Creeds and Confessions, Dan McClellan Continued

Well, greetings and welcome. I was just looking at Twitter and I I am

NOT obviously the only one experiencing this. I am so maddened by the fact that You'll sit there and you'll be reading something and it just disappears.

It just it's gone. Poof refreshes gone You'll never find it again. You try to find it.

Can't find it. It just disappears. It's Getting me that close to go. Oh forget this

It really is I Porn bot stuff never a problem for me.

I've never had it popping up or anything like that, but That is enough to drive me crazy.

It really is, you know your scroll along find something you get three sentences into it and it's gone

You'll never find it again. Just So, um,

I'm a little hesitant to say this But I was reading a tweet

That I was asking for prayer for Tom Pennington Countryside Bible there in Texas It said that he's had a heart attack

I can't even and I got to that point and Done.

No way to find it. Don't know who posted it So I can't verify that so Tom if you're great, sorry, someone said something but that's sort of unlikely

It's it's probably much more likely that that it was real and I just can't find it again Because you can't find anything on Twitter.

That's how it works So we definitely need to pray for our brother along those lines

I've had the opportunity of speaking there a couple of times in the past and Very important very important church

And of course, I think by the end of next week We're gonna have a really good idea where the Southern Baptist Convention is going to be going

If if you if you know anything about history You know that every single one of the rainbow denominations that we see today

Where their churches are closing down right left center. They're not going to exist 30 years from now You see the videos and there's 15 people in the congregation

If they didn't have the money left over from believers from past generations, they wouldn't even exist

Every single one of them every single one of them started by rejecting biblical parameters of Sufficiency and what do

I mean by that? We are only given the qualifications for men

To be elders in the Church of Christ. We are not given qualifications for women elders we're not given qualifications for sacra sacerdotal priests, and that's why we don't believe in those things and Once you go, well, yeah, okay.

We're given stuff for men, but it doesn't mean we need to have it for women the the the path has been paved the gate has been kicked open and You're gonna be the

United Methodist you're gonna be the Episcopalians you're gonna be you know, ELCA PCUSA just the list is long

UCC which was you know, when apostate a century ago But there you go.

That's that's we'll pretty much know by then next week. Don't forget right now in the month of June raffle going on for The Trying to come up with a name.

Okay, this this is the ESV creeds and confessions Which will be good talk. We're gonna be talking about right now from Jeffrey Rice The layered the word is layered cross it's a layered cross we realize it's a layered cross okay that we all we all get we see the layers we get that but it's a

A Pierce original No, no here's it's it's it's not a

Pierce original I the Dennehy designs did the design I use their template Let's not get let's not do that Okay, we'll come up with I'm sure

Twitter will be able to help me out with with a an appropriate name and Remember the the the

Bible is It's an it's not Isaac line.

It's Isaiah Isaiah line. Yes. There you go. Okay We will be getting back to Dan McClellan on not just the textual issue but when

I was writing up The last program and I was trying to find the link

To that video on YouTube I ended up running across a bunch of stuff he's done Promoting the revisionist understanding of homosexuality and it's a great illustration of how to do

Scholarship anachronistically backwards. Well the entire revisionist stuff is but again,

I'm sitting here as I think about I'm sitting here going how if someone had told me as We were wrapping up the first time we were in Salt Lake City Passing out tracks at the

General Conference the LDS Church if someone had told me That in a certain number of years the majority of the

Salt Lake City Council would be LGBTQ That there would be

LGBTQ Organizations on campus at BYU I Would have looked at you and gone that's not possible

Mormonism presents a theology of a gendered physical

God male and female the the Cisgendered reality of human history is hardwired into LDS theology,

I mean, it's one of the main things that makes Mormonism completely separate from Christianity is their their

God is an exalted man God men and angels are all the same being and Yet that's where we are had had that happen and I think people like Dan McClellan are the people who are mainstreaming this stuff into the

Mormon mind and Since Mormonism does since Mormonism has always been so deeply subjective

You know the burning in the bosom It's always been disconnected from history

Had to be it did it purposefully Purposefully that all the creeds of abomination

We're not connected to them. Nope. There was no priesthood from the time there to restoration. And so there's this big gap and so There's no solid foundation for standing against this cultural revolution within Mormonism, and it's just collapsing around it and I think

Dan McClellan is an example of that and we'll we'll look at some of that over time, but first things first,

I wanted to Okay, there it is.

Oh, it's over here. That's why it's not popping up I wanted to This is something

I I think this was posted around the 30th of May. So it's been a little over a week

Brad Flossen from the Master's Seminary Posted a thread a 13 tweet thread on The subject of this graphic and I I've seen this graphic before You'll notice that what you have here

What it says down at the bottom and it was rather small there. These historical documents do not replace the

Bible They protect the soundness of biblical interpretation Creeds and confessions of faith are useful tools which keep the church from repeating age -old heresies.

So you've got Interpretation with history you've got creeds confessions of faith and then you've got

Going pretty much all the same direction with a few variations Interpretation without history and no creeds of confessions the

Bible and it goes every which direction and you end up way out Here someplace and that kind of stuff.

Okay, so this is the the image and Dr. Klassen asked

What is what he's got here every so often this diagram makes the rounds on the one hand

I appreciate the concern it shows for sound doctrine. The interpretation of Scripture is not a free -for -all I also preach appreciate the attempt it makes to show the role of secondary authorities in God's economy

God has instituted the Fellowship of Believers Act 1711 and the Office of Elders Titus 1 9 as important means the validation and invalidation of claimed interpretations of Scripture However, I believe the diagram raises more questions than it answers number one which creeds and Confessions and that's one of the first thoughts

I had first time. I saw this is Which creeds which confessions of faith

Are we talking about See, it's just very it's just so vague in general

That all you can make is a vague in general argument You can't get specific and hence you can't make applications.

So are we talking about the Westminster Confession of Faith? We're talking about the London Mass Confession. Are we talking about the 39 articles?

Heidelberg what which ones and which creeds? Are we are we talking about you know,

I would assume everybody would say oh the Nicene Creed. Okay, it says creeds

Chalcedon, okay, Ephesus Constantinople so the expansion of the

Nicene Creed of Constantinople, okay Nicaea too and That's generally whenever when the wheels fall off because The vast majority of Protestants are gonna go.

Yeah. No Okay, why and on what basis? So Which creeds of confessions no one argues that all of them function this way in any practical sense someone might

It would be much more helpful if proponents would list the creeds of confessions. They have in mind within those blue arrows until then it's just theoretical and That's exactly right.

It is just theoretical Since the guardrails must be selected from among many options who has the authority to make this choice

Who gets who gets to make that choice? The individual interpreter if not, then who has the authority to require this of the interpreter?

So if you're If you're looking at because it says the

Bible and You've got these arrows and so I'd assume what that means is

You have Colossians chapter 1 and its testimony to Christ centrality in creation

So is the idea well that needs to be interpreted in the light of?

the Nicene Creed or Does Colossians chapter 1 give rise

To the impetus behind and the definition of the Nicene Creed These are things a lot of people never think about and and one of the reasons that I wanted to walk through this is in my experience and Mine is not a universal experience but I Have been involved in Apologetics for 40 years and so I do have a little bit more than the average bears experience in this area and In that experience,

I would say that the individuals who are most Likely to Really emphasize a graphic like this and Want to You know press it upon us are the same people that I have never seen active in the apologetic realm in other words

They're primarily Interacting with people in their own space in their own echo chamber and So you can sort of get over the making the choices about creeds and confessions because well, we're all using the same ones anyways, well

What happens when you wander outside of Your particular school your particular classroom your particular

Facebook group And you start trying to talk with people who have very different creeds and confessions

Then you are even familiar with I mean it just seems to me that a lot of people

Who make a lot of claims about this kind of stuff Don't have any idea of what was going on Before during and after for example

Nicaea to or Calceta, you know, so you've got books by Roman Catholics Here is

Leo Donald Davis is the first seven ecumenical councils So you can you can pick up stuff like this and this one's not

I mean trying to cover seven ecumenical councils and that many pages is obviously going to be very basic, but The vast majority of people

I know have not even read something like this let alone you know the acts of the second council of Nicaea and the the condemnations the canons and stuff like that to come afterwards and the

Condemnation and the anathema upon anyone who would reject the propriety of the veneration of images

All that kind of stuff. I Don't hear these people even have showing much of a familiarity let alone interacting with people who actually accept that kind of thing so That's why

I want that's why when I read this When it was first posted on May 30th, I'm like, yeah, these are the these are the questions that Make people very very uncomfortable

But they are the questions must be asked. So If not, then who has the authority to acquire this of the interpreter the one who proposes the diagram in the first place

So is is that is the diagram promoter saying and I'll tell you which creeds and confessions of faith

Will fulfill my diagram What are the criteria for selecting which creeds and confessions are to be held as authoritative if the answer is the

Bible? Then the diagram fails to portray this adequately If the answer is something else

That something needs to be acknowledged. So how do you determine it? I mean they're standing on the

Bible So, how does the Bible do that? Because it's it wasn't all that long ago we were talking about certain people who were being promoted heavily amongst

Conservative Reformed folks in the United States being told you have to read the

Bible through the lens of the Nicene Creed Okay, but which which came first and that's gonna that's gonna be something that dr.

Klassen brings up Um The contrast between the two diagrams leads to the conclusion that the

Bible lacks its own internal guardrails to protect interpreters from error

These guardrails are something that another authority must provide Because the image on the right you still have the

Bible down there But the creeds and confessions are gone. And so there's nothing there

To you know, everything just goes wacky just goes flying off into nowhere Resulting in the conclusion

That the Bible in of itself is insufficient the Bible does not

Present if you're handling the Bible correctly You're not gonna come up with the idea of the church.

You're not gonna have elders What I don't know So he says these guardrails are something that another authority must provide how does this impact the sufficiency of Scripture That's a real good question, how does it impact the sufficiency of Scripture?

Where does that end up going? Number five it is illegal to remove or tamper with guardrails on a freeway

Analogously are the selected creeds and confessions to be treated at a practical level as unassailable unquestionable, you know

When I dared to go, you know, there's a historical background

To well even the Council of Nicaea. There's a historical background Part of the

Argumentation That took place at the time was due to the fact that there had been previous councils

They were local councils. And of course the idea of local versus ecumenical. It's anachronistic.

No one was thinking that way back then But especially in the East they had struggled with modalism the various forms of modalism

Sabellianism patrapassion ism, but we call oneness theology today and And They had rejected some of the language that the council wanted to use to try to affirm the deity of Christ So there's there's a historical background

Well, what do you do with that? What do you do with? The political influence the the ever -increasing

Political influence in Each council as it comes into existence because that is not even arguable

The what we would call secular authorities. They weren't secular in the modern sense, but the political

Authorities of the time specifically Emperors and empresses

Along with Popes and prelates and Archbishops and Especially as the

Western Empire is collapsing You know the Bishop of Rome inherits tremendous political power as the

Western part of the Empire disappears he's left standing there holding the pulling the keys basically and so That's gonna lead to all sorts of problems

Degradations during the pornocracy then the rise of the huge Papal Names that you know had emperors standing outside their doors begging to begging for their forgiveness

That's gonna come later on but politics increased in its

Importance All the way through from council to council to council and When you can literally look at a creed from a council and go okay this phrase

Was demanded by this political power and this phrase was to keep this group from splitting away from the council and This phrase represents the people who wanted this person

To have a say in these things We can do that Especially with later councils we can figure out where this stuff was coming from and How can that if you say that becomes infallibly

Authoritative and cannot be questioned Then you have to admit that there are sources outside of Scripture That are vitally important That are never mentioned in Scripture itself you you can't hold the soul of Scripture you cannot hold the sufficiency of Scripture You can't do it, but there are people who want to pretend they're gonna try but it

That's why they're not doing any debates like that They don't want to go up against someone who can press them to go.

Are you sure about that? Um What of those who want to remove just a poll here and a panel there is it acceptable

Are not the creeds and confessions themselves still interpreted? Do the current debates not show that even those who confess various creeds and confessions

Still disagree among themselves on certain nuances stated within these authorities.

Well that That's a given that unfortunately again Very few people give thought to because if you've never even read

The proceedings as of especially the later councils Then you're hardly gonna be in a position to be aware of the differences of interpretation

But the more complex the question being addressed The more likely it is that the answer you're gonna give is liable to be being interpreted in other ways um

So yeah Regarding the content of the creeds and confessions point number seven

What about the commentary that is the canons? That goes with them.

This is something I've asked many many times and A lot of people don't give it a second thought because they haven't bothered to read any of it.

I Mean, you know in 1990 2003 Was it for anyway 30 years ago or so.

I was doing a debate in Boston College somewhere around this time of year and With Scott Butler and Robertson Janice and They're trying to pull out literally the

Arabic version of Of Was it canon 28 or canon 6 at Nicaea, I think it was canon 6 at Nicaea and 28 to calcine

Anyway, the point is they're pulling foreign language versions of the canons as a means of trying to get around What these canons meant in their original language in the original context

And again, most folks that are promoting this stuff they they don't engage with people like that They're not going to encounter that kind of stuff to even have to give it a thought so I've often said it seems to me that when people say well, you know you you

You just need to give implicit Obedience to this stuff and it's like, okay so you're supposed to ignore the historical context of these things and You're supposed to read the confessions in a way that the writers of the confessions

Never intended them to be read because they intended to be read within the context of the canons right is that not a given and I don't think most people can argue it because it's just not something that people think about or ever given much thought to So Dr.

Clausen goes on are those part the canons? Are they are those part of the guardrails?

I Could I could I know I can pretty much answer that for the

People who wrote the creeds Confession the creeds and the canons for the councils their answer would be of course there of course there

But the vast majority of us do not function on that and my point is

Maybe we're inconsistent and if so, why are we and Are we consistently inconsistent and I would say that we are in other words we are

Holding these to the higher standard of scripture itself So we're being consistent along those lines, but that separates us from the fact that as the creeds and as the councils became ever more

Authoritative in their pronouncements They were ever more that far removed from the authority of scripture

For example, he says the canons of the seventh ecumenical council second Nicene That's the one we like to pick on because it's the most obvious one

Which anathematized those who rejected icons and it did and it didn't do it in a couple words

It Goes all out and most of us to be sitting here going.

I don't even understand what's going on here. Yeah, that's That's the point

I'm afraid number eight. How does this diagram differ from all the guardrails?

Instituted by the Scribes and Pharisees for the interpretation application the Old Testament Did Jesus condemn them merely for selecting the wrong guardrails?

For example, see mark 7 mark 7 the Corban rule You invalidate the

Word of God for the sake of your traditions Etc, etc. So that takes us back to a biblical example

The largest bodies of confessional Christians Roman Catholics Eastern Orthodoxy Some mainline

Protestants would generally agree with this diagram yet. They are whitewashed tombs filled with spiritual death

Where the diagram fail with them? so You know, there's all sorts of creeds and confessions but the creeds and confessions didn't stop indulgences did they in Fact it was the elevation of creeds and confessions to a

Unbiblical level of authority that laid the foundation for the definition the definitions of Merit and grace and Development of purgatory and all this stuff that Becomes this foundation that eventually builds up to where you can have concepts such as indulgence

So where the diagram fail with them Was faithful there's a good question for you was faithful Bible interpretation possible

Before the selected creeds and confessions were universally published. So even if we don't

Identify which creeds and confessions were specifically referring to here Was faithful Bible interpretation possible

Before they were universally published if so, how and why is it and Why is that still not possible today?

What has changed? So in other words if you could accurately interpret the Bible Let's say

Five years after the Council of Constantinople, so let's say 386

Was faithful Bible interpretation possible before Selected creeds and confessions were universally published.

So could you Properly interpret the Bible before the Council of Constantinople Before the Council of Chalcedon gave its before Pope Leo wrote his tome

Could you faithfully interpret scripture in that context And if you could

Then what has changed if you can't do it any longer now,

I think these are Really important things to think through, you know, you're not just throwing it out there to make people uncomfortable

You're you're throwing it out there because it's important He concludes by saying

Again, I do affirm the role of secondary authorities. I must the Bible itself teaches me so But lesser authorities must never obscure the perfection clarity sufficiency or necessity of the ultimate authority

God's Word Let's do better with diagrams is Is what he says at that?

particular point and so Yeah, I think those are important questions

That everyone should be thinking through on a regular basis and especially those who

Brian Just posted a screenshot from the program here today. Oh, no, that wasn't that's not today

That's actually from the last program. I recognize it's it's a the shirts similar, but not quite just one of my many

Colorful summer shirts it About a hundred and we hit 112 yesterday, which again

That's 10 stinking degrees below the all -time high So it's like yeah, and it's right now.

It's as dry as a bone out there. So it's like It doesn't really get hot here 122 is hot.

Okay, and that was toward the end of June June 26 1990 But once the monsoon starts and the humidity, oh

It gets ugly All right, so I'll take this thing out of here Thank you for that.

I I was gonna do this to be in the beginning. Well, we'll do it here really quickly this morning

How do I get that full screen? This morning

I did something I have not done for a very very very very very very long time and I Honestly, I'm wondering why it has been so long but I dragged myself out of bed at Like 315 and I Drove down to South Mountain Park.

I used to do this all the time and Those of you like I'll go Will remember me

Saying over and over again Yeah, I was right in the South Mountain today. I was listening to Shabir Ali and Shabir Ali said

XYZ or I remember I was in South Mountain when I heard

Bart Ehrman for the first time basically say that if God had inspired the

Bible he would have made sure There weren't any textual variants. I'm sort of like what's he gonna do?

Cause the cause the scribe was about to make a mistake to spontaneously combust

I mean, what what is this stuff? And I remember pretty much what curve I was on because the the climb up to the the towers at South Mountain is a steep and technical climb and certainly a very technical descent and So It's a place

I used to go all the time I've been there I was there when we set our all -time I think we eclipsed this last year.

We set our all -time high low of 96 I think we hit 97 last year

So that's been a clip. So I think that was like I Forgot what year it was, but I had my peachy cruiser

I remember that and I was climbing South Mountain in the dark when we when we did that it was it was hot

Um, so anyway, I am only

I'm less than three weeks out from my last surgery and I'm really looking forward to Colorado.

I'm really looking forward to riding up there I'm trying to moderate

My zeal and excitement because I know that I could wake up tomorrow morning and it's starting all over again and You know the whole thing gets trashed but right now

I'm just trying to do my best to Recover my fitness before this trip and hopefully some debates and things like that, but There are certain mountains in Colorado.

I just love riding a bike up and down and So the only way to really start preparing for that is to ride

South Mountain And so this morning I get down there. You can only get in they you know, it things have changed there used to be you know,

I got Some guy who works down there would have to come down and open the gate at five o 'clock and so like that It's all computerized now.

There's a little LED sign, you know and spot -on if I opens up and so, you know things have things have changed a bit over the years and And So you go rushing through there you know get the bike out as quick as you can because the

Sun's gonna be coming up and Once the Sun starts hitting you And We set a record for the date last night for the record high low it wasn't the all -time record high low, but the

The temperature last night was the highest that ever been on that date for the low in the morning

So I knew I needed to get up there and get this done get back because I haven't None of us have been doing a whole lot out in the heat.

It just hasn't been all that hot until just recent So I'm starting my climb up Toward where it turns and starts becoming really steep and I always wear a rear -view mirror and I notice it's really orange

Behind me my rear -view mirror. I saw like whoa, that looks like a really nice sunrise So I just stopped pedaling pull over real quick Pull the cell phone out of my back pocket and I'm literally just put on and I'm sort of doing this number

I mean, I I can't turn all the way around because I'm facing the other direction on the bike and I just I'm just sort of hitting a few, you know get get a few pictures.

We'll see what comes of it later. Well You can see here

What I got and not only is that stunning as far as the color goes but look at look at that No, that's called four peaks

Out there in the long distance and that's man. How far is four peaks from here? That is a long ways that's many many miles and So I've already climbed enough to have just enough altitude to be able to see that but I mean

You could you could sit out there and set up a camera and still not

Capture that that particular timing as far as the as the as it coming up over the so here's

Nope, that's not what I want. There you go I mean that is just Wow, that's really nice.

I was like once I saw that as I was driving home. I'm like wow, that's that's impressive

So some of you may recall back in the olden days That I would post

Sunset or Sun Sunrise pictures all the time because I was out listening to the

Hadith or whatever else I was doing and Haven't done that for a couple years because that was the first time

I've ridden in South Mountain in two years. It was July of 2022 It's the last time

I was there and I I feel really guilty now What we should make that the background in the rig for the show

That would be Really cool But how would we do that? Well?

Okay. So you remember when we were a g3 we had the pop -up things that okay, we can have those custom -made just a perfect width you'd drop it on the couch and then just Pull it up and then drop it down when you're driving

We could yes, yes that would work that would look totally cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah But I think what we need to do is look a whole lot better than that light you have

That's the whole reason you're talking about it. And I know that so I think we do that with the brick background and because The Sun the

Sun the sunrise just yeah, it's just no it would it would it'd be amazing Yeah, so get the brick one because I have them

I have I have the brick one Yeah But you can't fold it up as custom and all that because we would send the image to I know that I know that they would

Print the thing. I know I know I know So we can we can find a brick to have them do that with It would work and that would be the best way because I'm not sure

I can't figure out how to do the one It can be it could it should be able to be done Let's talk about it another time that Pete that the rest the audience doesn't need to be involved in this discussion at all

Once I see him pull that Microphone up then. I know we've got we've got issues So, all right, we're going back to Dan McClellan here and the geeky stuff.

Remember the last time we were together we Were listening to Dan McClellan who introduces himself as I am a

Bible scholar Okay, that's nice Great and he is a

Mormon which one of the really interesting things for me is If you're going to apply critical methodology to the

Bible then I just don't see how the Book of Mormon or The Doctrine and Covenants Program price.

I mean the Book of Abraham. I Haven't done a search of Dan McClellan's videos, but I would just be fascinated if he's actually addressed the the

Book of Abraham because Wow, I Just don't even I don't know how anybody can look at that and go.

Oh, yeah that Abraham wrote that Right. Okay. So anyways, he's talking about remember last time

Somebody put out a thing about you know, how many manuscripts there were and 99 .5

% accuracy and I criticized it It was poorly expressed poorly argued poorly constructed

This was not well done at all. And so, you know people say yeah, you're picking on low -hanging fruit.

Well, all right We're not right here, but he definitely is in his response.

Let's pick up pretty much where we were With what he has to say of the

New Testament we have maybe 124 manuscripts. Okay, so that's that's in the the first 300 years and It would be good if he would say and in comparison to Pretty much any other work of antiquity.

That's far more We have far earlier attestation. I could play you the clip from my debate with Bart Ehrman Where he said we have far earlier attestation for the

New Testament than for any other work of antiquity and That's that's not even questionable Unfortunately a lot of times people don't really

Give you that and the whole whole rest of it Maybe three of them contain the entire

New Testament and those all come at the very end of that window our earliest manuscript of any kind dates to about 125

CE contains like 36 or 37 words of the tens of thousands of words in the new

In the New Testament. Okay now that one bothered me I'm sorry my connection to the

Cameras outside has has died it's been problematic all day actually, but I'm getting it going here once once I see

Once I see that the cars out on the road are frozen in place. I've sort of figured that no longer seeing

Stuff like that and you might go. Why do you need to see that stuff because we live in Phoenix and It was only once but I did catch someone trying to steal

Rich's car once and So we do keep an eye on things so back to Dan McClellan, so what he just said was

The earliest goes to about 125. I don't know why uses the CE thing, but anyway, and I know what he's talking about and he says it only contains like 37 38 words out of all the words of the

New Testament and I'm like okay, like I said, I don't get a feeling he's familiar

CB GM and I don't care if you call yourself a Bible scholar

I can tell when somebody doesn't do text criticism, but has read, you know, it's had to read about some of it

But doesn't actually do it because Yeah, I know.

I just put him up there bring him down a second. Um, here is There it is

Here's what he's talking about okay, and We've looked at this before and those of you who've seen my debate with Bart Ehrman know that I was wearing a tie that featured these images during that particular debate and This is manuscript p52 and It is very small.

It's about the size of a credit card. You're seeing both sides of it recto versa and You can sort of tell this was up toward the top of the page

Because you can see the top margin of above it in my presentation on the reliability

New Testament, I give you a I Wrap the rest of the text around this so you can see how it would have looked

But yeah, there are very few words there Does that? lessen

The value of the manuscript will depends on what you want the manuscript to be doing if we want a full

Manuscript of the Gospel of John from 8125 then yeah but why is this so important and Why can a small fragment like this?

Be so vitally important that we should be quite excited about it Well, the answer is given in the reality that what you have here

It's not What it's from Though it is from the

Gospel of John and The irony is most of modern scholarship

Would say Mark is the first gospel and then Matthew and Luke copy from Mark and then

John and then John's written long long long After that that raises far more questions than it actually answers, but we won't get into that right now.

We've talked about in the past It is from John John is the earliest attested of the

Gospels as far as its manuscript tradition is Okay, someone might argue a particular fragment over here from Matthew or something like that but in general

And it's not that it's from John chapter 18 31 34 on one side 37 38 on the back side which is fascinating because that's

Jesus's conversation with Pilate or Pilate says what is truth? I've really found it

Providential that this manuscript This little fragment would be from that section given the skepticism that has been expressed toward The Gospels as a whole or the

Gospel of John in particular No, the issue is this This demonstrates that the

Gospel of John in the form. We have it today Inclusive of the 18th chapter and its

Interaction of Jesus with the Romans and all the important stuff that goes with that was already in circulation and being copied in the first quarter of the second century and When you

Recognize as I said last time the all -out effort on the part of The Roman Empire to destroy the

New Testament to destroy the Christian scriptures You look at this little piece of papyrus and If you lived in the year 125 and You were making a copy of the

Gospel of John And you're saying they're having a Conversation With somebody else and that one guy

We all have those friends. They're that one guy This one guy goes. Hey, I said a thought

I Wonder what's the chance that The papyrus you're writing on right now could like last for 2 ,000 years and you're just trying to do an

Accurate copy of what you're copying. You don't even want to get into this but What would be the chance?

Of all the copies the Gospel of John and there had to be a lot of them You know how we know there had to be a lot of because Christianity grew and the

Romans destroyed Thousands and thousands and thousands of manuscripts and so there had to have been a lot of them for them to be destroying all of them right

So what would the chance be? that this little fragment

Would end up in the basement in London Having been brought from Egypt when the

British stole everything from Egypt So as to be recognized

By some guy who's leafing through all these fragments in the basement

What is the chance It's tiny Really really tiny.

There's a lot of stuff that can destroy papyrus. Okay moisture bugs mold fire war

You name it Papyrus is very defenseless

That's just all there is to it So what is the chance and So what is the value of something like this?

You know, I just got 37 38 words. That's not the point the point is it testifies to the existence of the

Gospel of John as the Gospel of John we know today in the first part of the second century and No other work of antiquity comes even close to this even close

So it really really should Be seen for the the valuable thing that it is

So we'll pull that down there again as p52 if you're interested in looking it up sometime

And that's that's actually a pretty nice Image I had there so we go back to Our Video Testament so we can't even cobble together a full

New Testament until that earliest Full copy of the New Testament and again, why would anyone expect that?

We should be able to What we should if you understand history if you understand manuscript tradition if you if you recognize that contemporary documents to the

New Testament Average that the first extant manuscript we have

Averages 500 to 900 years after the original was written then.

Why would we expect to have? Anything more than that? Why even present it this way? This is the egg nut.

This is the agnostic way of expressing thing and this again is why

I just sit back and I go Fight me it you believe in this

Book of Mormon, dr. Cosberg is called the triple. You're speaking like this about the

New Testament. You have to know The massive problems it's one thing.

Okay doctrine and covenants. Okay That doesn't claim to be an ancient document so All right

But the Book of Mormon The textual changes in the

Book of Mormon since it was first printed We have we have We have more data

Because it's a modern production about the print the printing and production of the

Book of Mormon that we could ever have a something from 2 ,000 years ago and You apply similar standards there and you're just gonna go.

Whoa pure read action changing editing, whatever change words and then you get into The Book of Abraham, I Mean really

I did the the chasm here just leaves me going

I Don't get it. You mentioned the Book of the Doctrine and Covenants. Well the Book of Commandments.

We're talking about Major changes within what five ten year period 1833 Book of Mammons 1835

Doctrine and Covenants Yeah So I you know Maybe he just doesn't even believe they're ancient documents.

I Mean, there are more and more Mormons that are I don't know why they remain Mormons There's no reason to it's just you know

Our tradition or something. I don't know but I don't get it. So Why would you expect to have

Full copies of the New Testament. Do you have any idea how much that would cost to produce? I've seen a lot of discussion.

I have the I have the Codex Sinaiticus facsimile down there And it's humongous.

I don't know if you can see that. I don't think you can see that That's the wrong button there, bro. You can see the corner of it.

It's right there That's the corner. It's huge. It's massive Is Extremely expensive to produce

Extremely expensive to produce the vast majority of Christians could never have have owned something like that so But The patristic sources demonstrate that the vast majority of the

New Testament is functioning as Scripture before we have

Manuscripts that have survived long enough To give us that physical testimony so the you know the the patristic citations of The entire and the entirety of the

New Testament Long predate the physical manuscripts that have survived all the way down through the centuries

Um They ain't nothing like that for the Book of Mormon There's nothing

Because the Book of Mormon is a modern production it is it is the essence of anachronism the essence of anachronism

I Will never forget being in the studio

KTKK radio felt like city Daniel C.

Peterson William Hamblin in studio Martin Tanner the oh small studio, too, wasn't it?

Was it really? Really? See I've forgotten that I was focused on other things

So why was it really hot if it was in either April or October because it was around conference

Huh? Rich is remembering that it was really hot In the in the radio station when we were there

I that is interesting But I remember that I remember exactly where Martin Tanner was.

I remember where Hamblin and and Peterson were and we're taking phone calls.

I mean, they're all Mormons that are calling in I mean, it's me against the entire Salt Lake Valley And I bring up the fact the

Book of Mormon Talks about Unsheathing swords and Basically scalping people and they didn't have the metallurgy to do that and these guys are literally talking about obsidian war clubs where you would take obsidian rocks and embed them in wooden war clubs as if that's what it what and I'm sitting there going so you're gonna you're gonna pull that out of a sheath and You're gonna you're gonna slice the top of somebody's heads off with a war club with chips of obsidian rock in it right

Okay, sure Whatever you say, is that where he's gonna go? I can't go there and not be consistent.

I Wow, I I don't know I don't know it but it's it is fascinating to Listen to this stuff in the mid to late 4th century

Additionally, we don't know what was going on in the textual transmission of these texts between their composition and Our earliest textual witness to them now

Here's here's the thing and he's he says he's gonna get into this later in the video, which is important.

There's only Two minutes and 28 or am I at 228?

It's a short video. So anyway, this is One of the most important aspects in my perspective of What we've been trying to do for years and years in preparing

Christians to give a defense For the inspiration scripture and for the function of scripture some of you will remember that starting 17 18 2017

I forget when I enrolled at Northwestern The old Pocha stream University. I was going down to South Africa regularly and I began a

PhD program and the reason I did so down there was because my dr. Vaughn or my doctoral advisor did his

PhD under Metzger and in the 1970s And my initial project

That was approved was to look into this exact issue this exact issue

Because every work of antiquity has what's called a black hole that is

Unless you possess the original manuscripts of a document

Then there is a time period between when the document was originally written and The first extant copy which as I mentioned a few moments ago on average

For things written contemporaneously with the New Testament that time frame is 500 to 900 years long

So stuff is being written contemporaneously with the New Testament our first manuscripts on average are between 500 and 900 years later, so that's the the black hole

That's the period of time where you do not have physical manuscripts

Documenting what the transmission process is about So we just looked at p52

If you take the later date of John that a lot of people would have 98 ish

Then that's within 25 years of The original writing if you put it before 8070 it's still

Within 55 years of the original writing In comparison to any other work of antiquity nothing comes even close

You would think that would be something that would be emphasized or wow

It's just really amazing that this New Testament is very very different than it not you did You've got people who are trying to raise doubts in people's minds not

You know really honestly deal with the with the facts as they stand and So my thesis project was to use p45 right here

That's not p45. That's one page of p45 that I had printed a long time ago

And my initial thinking was in studying p45

I Saw that P45 is very unusual we have portions of Matthew Mark Luke John and acts.

It's the only Early manuscript we have that has all five and probably in the

Western order initially And Fragmentary obviously

I mean that's the that's the largest chunk. That's the largest page that we

Have and of course that's blown up a lot of like the mark and stuff is just very small and but the point is

Studies of p45 Had demonstrated that each of the books

Has a different textual character and what I mean by textual character is again prior to We're really talking

Between 10 to 14 years ago now all of scholarship and most scholarships still speaks this way, but The consensus is breaking down would utilize and Dan McClellan use this to of text types

Alexandrian Western Caesarean in some context Byzantine especially and You had differences in one manuscript which meant that the author that manuscript had access to Different exemplars

That had a different textual background to and this is around the year 200 to 220

So what I want to do and would still love to do really would love to do

What I wanted to do was to use that as the foundation to try to shine a light into that period where we don't have documentation as Small as it is for any work of antiquity but to still press from that direction and As I've mentioned in the past It didn't take much time starting on that project

To encounter CBGM and The Major impact

CBGM analysis analysis and technology That would have to be taken into consideration and that had to change the nature of where we were going and then as I said

My advisor had a major heart attack During kovat and had to retire and that was the whole reason

I was going there was work with him and so That's where we've sort of gotten stuck sadly

But that's the idea is Yes, there is a You know, we don't know what was happening.

Well sort of If we only had a small number of manuscripts then yeah

Major revisions and changes and redaction could be taking place. But when you have a large number of manuscripts

Coming from different places This is the difference between the phone game idea of a single line of transmission

Where if you mess things up back here, there's no fixing it later on if you have multiple sources multiple lines of transmission to multiple audiences that fundamentally changes what this argumentation is all about and that's why

I've Emphasized this type of material for a long long time in the presentations that we've we've done now if you want a black hole for LDS scripture

For those that pretend to be ancient documents the black hole is complete

And there has to be the golden plates were taken back to heaven That's it.

The black hole is going to be What 1 ,500 years approximately

With nothing that there is nothing back there. There is no contemporary the

You don't have the physical realities that the

Book of Mormon describes Horses and chariots and swords and and the coinage system.

I was that it didn't exist in Mesoamerica so You can't even say well

Yeah, there's time period when this kind of a document could have been written no there wasn't that the first Appearance in the

Book of Mormon is Well, we can get in the Martin Harris stuff and the

Anthon transcript and all that kind of stuff Which in and of itself is fascinating as well But basically as it comes off the printing press in 1830 is the beginning of the

Book of Mormon and Yeah, we can now textually analyze that and the changes that have were made only oh in the past 20 years

There have been textual changes made in the Book of Mormon It continues to be a redacted text because it is not an ancient text.

It's a modern text produced by people who claim to have the authority of a prophet so You can change whatever you want,

I guess But there's just such a massive Chasm between discussing

How p45 can be relevant to casting light into that dark period?

Prior to our first manuscripts of other books. I mean You know mark is one of the later ones attested revelation, especially

But even then With the the CBGM volumes coming out and I'm just I'm hoping

Just keep an eye on the card rich because six months ago

I filled out something in German to be

Advised when the next CBGM thing came out. I've never heard anything back from We am we may end up with two which

At which point in time we donate one of them to a worthy seminary so they can use it too, but I The point is revelation has the wildest

Craziest textual tradition of any book of the New Testament and Yet we have a four volume set of Materials being published right now and they already exist.

I saw a video review of it and man, if anyone in this audience has access

To the four volume ECM of Revelation already Please please please

Either take a picture or write it down if you feel that's the only way you can do it there is a

It's only a couple pages But there is an appendix that gives you all the differences between the

Nessie Alan 28th edition the Greek New Testament and the new ECM of Revelation That in of itself would be

Fascinating to be able to discuss but the point is We can do this

Even with The most textually challenged of the books in the New Testament. You can't do anything but the

Book of Mormon the book of Abraham in The LDS scriptures it they don't they're not in the same realm.

They're not historical They are modern 1830 is modern so There you go

Um That's a little bit more And that is a black hole for textual criticism

We just don't know and we're gonna come back to that now the two statements of fact that are just pure fabrication

One is the ninety nine point five percent Accuracy claim this is a number that was literally just made up Norman Geisler in a couple of different publications claimed that the textual critic

Bruce Metzger Estimated the New Testament to be ninety nine point five percent textually accurate

Bruce Metzger never made any such statement whatsoever. Norman Geisler just made it up and now

I I don't I don't know I've seen stuff like this obviously a number of times and you know, you'll you'll you'll have these big great names of textual scholars in the past and they're gonna

Estimate 1 .5 percent or 2 .5 percent and and you put all this stuff together and that's where you come up with it

I I don't know But I just want to remind you as we play this that on the last program.

What did we do? we pulled up CBGM we pulled up the modules online and showed you how for individual verses chapters books

You can now using the CBGM databases and the interfaces that are available you can demonstrate the consistency of The manuscript testimony to these works and you can find out, you know

Is it ninety six point seven percent? Is it because if I recall correctly on average?

I think the Byzantine is like eight at 87 that identifies that but once you

Once you actually start looking at specific wording. It's much higher than that Because that's looking at all the variants put together

So it's much higher than that and and this the CBGM databases demonstrated. It's not an estimate anymore

Because when Geisler is writing his stuff general introduction of the Bible That Kind of computer technology did not exist and there was no human being no matter how much time they had spent

Metzger or anybody else with the manuscripts that could possibly Remember enough variants and remember, you know minor variants because now the computer can look at all the minor stuff and Put all that in there to be able to come up with Numbers like that.

Yes, you couldn't do it. So it's always a guesstimate But now with CBGM it's a computerized

Documentation of the most extensive collation of New Testament manuscripts has ever been done

That's the day we live in it's great day attributed it to Metzger and when he was called on this he said well

It doesn't matter. Look at all these other figures. They have estimated that Maybe one in 20 variants is meaningful.

Maybe one in 60 variants is meaningful Maybe one in a thousand variants is meaningful.

And so he took a bunch of guesstimates By scholars who were just riffing on how many textual variants are meaningful

And he cobbled all these guesstimates together and said they average out to about ninety nine point five percent

Accuracy, so okay. The problem here is Yes, Norm struggled with few things he

He's the one that that that misidentified how you even identify variants and how many there actually are

I wasn't his field Neither was reformed theology this field either as some of us demonstrated and documented but um

But even there in criticizing this that I sense confusion because when when

I lecture on this stuff and And I do this with laypeople. So I need to make sure they're following and understanding what it is.

I'm saying I Explain the difference between Viable and Meaningful and I'm not hearing that distinction being made here

Meaningful means that it impacts the translation and hence the meaning of the text

Viable which would be the better term here refers to the

Possibility that this variant could represent the original Because there are variants in the

New Testament, they're not viable I'll give you a good example It's the one that we have focused upon in dealing with the

TR folks And the TR is all the Book of Mormon had by the way Mentioned that in passing.

Well, it didn't even have the TR. It had the English translation of the TR Again the anachronism is obvious but Ephesians 3 9

Ephesians 3 9 in the TR Comes from a 12th at the earliest 12 13th century manuscript where What kind of Mia versus Koinonia we've gone through all this before look it up In my responses to Jeff Riddle and stuff like that That's not a viable variant.

There is no evidence of its existence in any Translation Latin Greek Coptic Sahitic Boheric, whatever

There is no existence Evidence of its existence prior to that Greek manuscript.

There's no patristic sources that demonstrate it And so it's not viable So if you have a single manuscript from the 13th century

That with no evidence Before it that it's reading ever existed.

That's not a viable reading so viable and meaningful are not the same thing Um because that variant is meaningful it changes the meaning of Ephesians 3 9

But it's not viable So again, that's where I get this feeling that This isn't his area

He's done reading in some of it, but not a whole lot of actual Hands -on work.

This is a made -up number that was then validated by averaging Guestimates from New Testament textual critics, so that number is simply false and then the 40

Verses that can't be resolved with textual criticism claim that is just looking at seven thousand nine hundred fifty seven verses and saying

What is point five percent of seven thousand nine hundred fifty seven Oh 40 verses?

Okay, that must be how many verses cannot be resolved with and like I said that that did not make a lick of sense to me

What the original claim was about And without a without examples of that it was yeah, it is bogus

Because variants are not verses There may be a few verses that have multiple variants that are both viable and meaningful

But there are very few variants that are our entire verse The vast majority of variants are one word word order forms of words stuff like that so yeah that part as We said last time didn't make a lick of sense and is completely bogus textual criticism now

I want to return to the biggest problem here the elephant in the room is that black hole between the composition of these texts and our earliest textual witnesses because when scholars talk about Textual criticism and how sure we can be and how few verses are unsure

They're talking about based on the manuscripts that we have Here are the readings that are unsure and those readings are the readings that are found in the existing

Manuscripts because many textual critics think you should not do any Conjectural amendations, you know, it should be spelled an

E if you're looking it up. It's not amendations It's amendations other words You should only propose a reading if we have a manuscript that contains that reading and I would be one of those people

I don't see any reason for conjectural amendation We've talked about this before I've responded to people

I respond I know I responded to TR only guys that Point to One or two instances of conjectural amendation in modern

Greek texts which are clearly documented right there Which I reject as well

Don't see any reason for them at all but that element of things you know, he's saying some say you should never have to we don't have to because of the depth and Breadth and Quality of the

New Testament manuscript tradition that we possess and this is an enormous assumption This is assuming that every single word that was written in the original

Autographs of the New Testament is somewhere preserved across the thousands of different manuscripts.

Yes. This is called And you you might want to listen to the

Cross -examination with Bart Ehrman the tenacity of the text This is a term used by Kurt Aland and discussed in his work

Where he argues that the New Testament text is tenacious That is that all readings even silly reading

That have appeared in the New Testament textual tradition continue in that textual tradition so That may sound really negative to people at first Because that means mistakes continue to be copied but what that also means is the original words continue to be copied and That's what's vitally important.

And I think that's really One thing that CBGM is

Providing evidence of I'm not gonna say proving but providing evidence of why do I say that?

Because so far that's why I was saying if anybody's got revelation already Send me that appendix

What we've seen in Mark acts and the general epistles is that listing of changes is extremely small and It is not in any way saying oh, we've got entire holes here

Now there's like one place in first second Peter someplace that the people go all see here's we're talking serious amounts of text here and The idea that the skeptic is

Trying to present is that you could have original readings That in that really short period of time

Disappear leaving no evidence no trace now again, if you had a

Single line transmission Then you I could see how that could happen.

We don't have a single line transmission We have multiple authors writing it multiple times to multiple audiences

There was no There was no group that control of New Testament manuscripts

They were spread all over the known world So the idea that you could have readings

That just simply disappeared does not make any sense When the

New Testament does begin to appear in p52 P4 p32 p46

P75 p72 p66 all these early papyri manuscripts it is the text we possess today and very few very few variants

Came to our notice only because the discovery of the papyri We already knew about the variants from later manuscripts, which again testifies to the tenacity of the text over time

And I just have to say once again None of this is even slightly relevant to any of the

Mormon Scripture outside of We could do an analysis of the textual changes of the

Book of Mormon in English as It's been printed and then edited by the

LDS Church all the way up to the modern period White and delights and pure and delights and stuff like that, but we know why that is

Okay, so we can't do see what we could you could technically do CBGM on the

English translation from 1830 onward But that's only good tell you who's doing the editing.

That's that's that's all that's gonna do You can't do any of this from it from a historical perspective because these are not historical books

The book of Abraham is the fevered fantasy of Joseph Smith's brain

It was not written by Abraham It's an Egyptian funerary document

Okay, so we could do CBGM on Egyptian funerary documents Okay, so if we wanted to come up with a really accurate version of The Book of the

Dead or the Book of Breathings in the Book of the Dead yeah, that is actually something you could do given the number of Manuscripts we have the only problem being

That those documents were not meant to be necessarily Accurately transmitted they could be edited given the context in which they were being used at particular point in time that changes everything

That changes everything CBGM is based upon the idea that the scribes are actually trying to Transmit the same text from one manuscript to another

Which they were That that's that's what they were doing, but it just strikes me once again

How strange it is to be dealing with this Again toward the end, but we're gonna do some more with Dan McClell in the future.

So I'll that's a good spot to to to say let's hold that there and Pick it up because we've we've covered a lot of the big important stuff and I have a feeling

I'm gonna see some of the comments on Twitter That's uh, you know, you're talking about stuff.

That's really complicated. Look. We've got a lot of folks that love talking about geeky stuff But here is a guy with a huge number of followers on YouTube and He's put putting this stuff out.

How do you respond to this stuff? In fact, okay, he's got 57 All right, he doesn't that's not as huge as I expected but 57 .5

K subscribers this stuff is out there. It's being used I Pulled it up here because I was going to if we had time.

Yes One of these little Videos I think that come from What are these little narrow ones they coming from Facebook or something?

They're there. I Don't know but anyway Can arson koi tie in first Corinthians 690 translated homosexuals?

He says no he is wrong wr -o -n -g with a capital W an exclamation point the end and so I've tagged that one and Go download it and that'll be

Something we'll we'll be able to deal with in the future as well. And hopefully this will be helpful everybody

Thanks for watching the program today Looks like that's yeah next week should be pretty much straightforward.

Yes Okay, you're not going up to Prescott next week or nope not doing that.

Okay. Had fun up there Good good. Why'd you do? All right. We'll see you next time.